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1874 - Cooma Express

The Cooma Express

November 30th, 1874

The Wild Man of Snowball

On the 3rd of October last, young Johnnie McWilliams was riding from his home at Snowball to Jinden P.O, Braidwood.

When about half way the boy was startled by the extraordinary sight of a wild man or gorilla. The boys states the wild man suddenly appeared from behind a tree, about thirty yards from the road, stood looking at him for a few seconds, and then turned and ran for the wooded hills a mile or so from the road.

The animal ran for two hundred yards across open country before disappearing over a low hill, so that the boy had ample time to observe the beast.

The boy states that he appeared to be over six feet in height and heavily built. He describes it as a big man covered in hair.

It did not run very fast and tore up the dust with its nails, and in jumping a log it struck its foot against a limb, when it bellowed like a bullock. When running, it kept looking at the boy, till it disappeared. It was three o-clock in the afternoon, and this boy described everything he saw minutely.

The boy is a truthful and manly young fellow, well acquainted with all the known animals in the New South Wales bush and persists that he could not have been mistaken.

For many years there have been tales of trappers coming across enormous tracks of some unknown animal in the mountains wilds around snowball. Of course these tales were received with doubt, and out down as clever romancing on the part of the possum hunter, but Johnnie McWilliams is believed by all who know the boy as a true tale.

The proof of the existence of such animal in the New South Wales should be of some interest to the naturalist – Braidwood Dispatch.